Get your motor running, head out on the highway… wait, it’s not that Peter Fonda-starring 1960s biker movie. No, The Wild Angels came a few years before Easy Rider, and it centres around a noticeably less idealistic group of bikers. Director Roger Corman hired several real Hell’s Angels to serve as extras in his film, and if you’re thinking there’s probably stories from that set, you’re right.
Let Ben and Graham tell you them: from Corman’s sociological reasons for having Bruce Dern’s character work at an oil refinery to the unexpected trouble he had involving a coffin and the letter “Z”. And, because this is Pop Screen, we also talk about the film’s musical legacy – not least a certain Primal Scream song – and its female lead Nancy Sinatra, whose career teaches us many valuable lessons. Here’s one: if you’re accused of being a nepo baby, why not get together with an incredibly rum country singer and release a series of duets that are so unwholesome as to sound actively diseased? All this and Frank Sinatra’s prog album, discussed herein!
If you wanna get loaded, and have a good time, there are few better venues than our Patreon, where you’ll find a bonus episode of this show every month, plus two exclusive podcasts concerning cult genre franchises (From the Video Aisle) and whatever we feel like (Last Night…). There’s also written articles on cult Asian genre cinema, Red Dwarf and The X-Files, plus plenty more – follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to find out more.
Subscribe to Pop Screen on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music & Spotify
Episode 123: Nancy Sinatra in The Wild Angels
Discover more from The Geek Show
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
